


The Deep Winter

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Angst, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Drama, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hibernation's hard to shake.</p><p>[Major spoilers for CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Pax's fault.](http://elricestual.tumblr.com/post/70095991632/im-so-sorry-a-result-of-sleep-deprivation-and-an) ♥
> 
> If you want to simmer in the sad, stop after the first chapter; if you want the full effect of the transparent fixer, keep reading. c:
> 
>  
> 
>   
> ~~I hope it's not too confusing, but I hate exposition, so it's just sort of a hand-wavey AU… as usual.~~  
> 

The deep winter is the hardest.

It always seems like winter up here, which is part of the appeal—there is no solitude so profound as that of snowed-in silence, when your heart beats so loud it sounds like thunder, and the creak of the walls is a scream—but in the _deep_ winter, the universe stops.

There is no sunlight. There is no day. There is no thaw. There is no reprieve. There is no prowling to be done; patrolling the perimeter would be tantamount to a slow and miserable suicide, although he hears that you feel _warm_ towards the end. There is no venturing out. There is no interruption. There is no way of logging the passage of moments; there is no concept of time; there is no _end_ in sight, no matter how many eyes one might have for searching.

There are only the walls, and the weak fire, and the drumbeat in his body. There are only the thoughts, and the memories.

And the dreams.

The rest of the year, he can wear himself down by force—he can exhaust himself so thoroughly that he’s too _tired_ to dream; his mind blacks out, and he wakes again to the howling wind, and he’s slipped through the night unscathed.

In the deep winter, there’s nowhere to run.

The dreams beg a question he’s asked before, but never so incisively, never where the unsaid words lodged steel-cold in the back of his throat—is it better to be haunted, or to forget?

Some of the dreams are good. In some of the dreams, they meet in a warm place, in a bright place; the sky explodes with color; there are shards of jade and flakes of gold in the smiling yellow eyes. In some of the dreams, they crush so close that he disintegrates; he _dissolves_ ; and all he can think is that it’s wonderful to disappear so _lightly_ , shedding all the layers, leaving on the sullied ground the chainmail coat of years of guilt and grief. In some of the dreams, they sit—they sit and talk for what seems like endless hours, and he can feel one hand cold and one hand hot wrapped tight in his for a _fraction_ of a second when he wakes.

Some of the dreams are not.

In some, the stairs down from the old temple with the colored glass go on interminably, and the dread mounts until it’s an anvil in his ribcage, and his heart strikes sparks, and he can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t see; and he wakes to sweat-soaked blankets and a stone-cold _certainty_ that Edward is dead.

In some, it’s not Selim in the room on fire—it’s Edward’s throat under Bradley’s hands; it’s Edward’s neck that snaps; it’s Edward that crumples like a ragdoll, glassy-eyed, limbs at wretched angles, blood on his lips, and his metal fingers twitch just once and then go still.

In some, a black-haired boy in a dark room looks up from pale chalk lines into empty sockets that should hold yellow eyes, and lank hair like seaweed draggles down over twisted, tortured, rotted flesh, and there’s a wheeze and then a whisper— _Why didn’t you save me?_

In some, he walks through the empty streets of Ishval, and there isn’t _time_ , and with every step the blazing sand grinds through another layer of him—it is _eroding_ him, his feet, his ankles, his calves, his knees—until he is crawling through the undulating waves of rising heat, and his gloved hand breaks through the ribcage of a half-buried skeleton with just one arm.

In some, he receives a telegram from the Lieutenant with just four words: _FOUND THE REMAINS STOP_.

In some, there is a figment of gold light that curls its gleaming warmth around him, drawing tight; it delves a spear of silver through the center of his chest and murmurs _Not enough_ , and then it dissipates.

Some mornings, as he slugs the gritty coffee before the chill finds it, before his better judgment makes him change his mind—some mornings he thinks it’s more than any man could take and hope to have his sanity. Some mornings he thinks it’s not enough to be equivalent—not yet.

So he dreams, as the winter deepens, and he waits.


	2. Chapter 2

Ed held out five fucking years—one-thousand, eight-hundred, and thirty days, to be precise—and he’s _fucked_ if he’s going to wait anymore.

It’s late enough that Hawkeye is leaving Central Command as he arrives—she holds the front door for him without even asking any questions, which probably means she _knows_. That probably means Ed should make sure she doesn’t get anywhere _near_ Al, ’cause he’s already showing some pretty serious signs of evil prescience, and the last thing he needs is a model to make it worse.

The outer office door is locked, so Ed takes it upon himself to demolish the keyhole with alchemy—which is actually a good thing, because it gives him a second to calm down.

After half a deep breath, a little bit of choking in melted metal fumes, the other half of the deep breath, and then a sincere _Aw, fuck it_ from his internal monologue, Ed walks all the way into Roy’s office, pulls up a chair in front of the desk, and sits down.

He positioned himself deliberately a bit towards the right to be directly in the bastard’s sightline, and with that one wide eye on him, he feels… naked. Exposed. Undone.

Fucking _thrilled_ , really.

Only two people have looked at him like that in the last five fucking years—like he’s an enticement, like he’s dangerous, like he’s _appetizing_. One of them is dead, and the other is sitting behind that desk.

“Hey,” he says, squarely meeting that goddamned beautiful dark eye. “Why won’t you touch me?”

Roy is very still for a long moment, and then his gaze flicks away, and his long fingers lay down his pen. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Ed’s whole body tenses with _rage_ for a second—and it’s fantastic, actually; it’s _amazing_ ; he hasn’t felt like this in _ages_. All Roy Mustang has to do is bullshit him, and he’s a _kid_ again; he’s pure piss and vinegar and flaring, fiery _life_. He thought he’d grown out of it, by now. He thought it’d been beaten out of him by the tides of time; he thought he was too tired.

Jesus, if Roy can inspire this _anger_ with half a dozen words, what other feelings might he be able…?

“You know exactly what I mean,” Ed says. “So do me a little favor and cut the crap. We’ve both been through enough shit by now—I just want to level with you, okay? All I’m asking is that you just be fucking honest with me for five minutes. Can you do that?”

Roy looks up at him again, and the _weariness_ dragging on every line of his face stops the breath in Ed’s throat for a second.

“I don’t suppose you realize,” Roy says. “You’re so accustomed to being _real_ with people; you’re used to _trusting_ , and so rarely does it let you down. You always have Alphonse at your back, and a goal and a road in front of you, and I have seen you terrified for the fates of others, but I have never seen you scared of losing _yourself_. But that happens to some of us, you know. We collapse. The things we want and the things we have done grow too heavy altogether, and we break, and we were never so distinct to start with that we understand our own construction. And so we are never right again. We _know_ we’re wrong—or some of us do—but we aren’t sure how to fix it, or if we can, or if perhaps the wrongness _is_ what we are now, and there’s never any going back. And we’re scared. We are scared that we have lost something fundamental to our beings, and we are scared that we are cracked and seamed and hideous underneath the masks, and we are scared that we will be found out and rightfully reviled. And we know, Edward, above anything—we know that sweet things sour, and good things fail, and bright things die. At that point, it seems so much safer not to try at all.”

Ed can’t decide whether he wants to grab Roy’s shoulders and shake him or cut to the chase and deck him with the metal fist.

“So you’re a coward,” he says. “After five fucking years, you’re too chickenshit to look at me just in case I won’t pretend to forget about all the fucked-up stuff that both of us have done. And for _that_ , you leave the room when I walk in, and you avoid me every chance you get, and you give me fucking _monologues_ when I ask for an answer. That’s why everyone else keeps hugging me to make sure I’m still here, and you wouldn’t even shake my fucking hand.”

“Not quite,” Roy says. He sets his elbow on the desk and props his chin on it, and he summons something like a smile. “Historically, when I touch you is the moment I wake up. And I don’t want you to go, Ed. I never do.”

Ed gets up, and Roy starts to shift to move away, but Ed’s still faster, and he’s around the desk and grabbing two fistfuls of Roy’s uniform just as the bastard stands and half-steps back.

“Don’t you go weak on me, Mustang,” he says, tightening his grip, hauling down hard. “Don’t you _fucking_ dare, because I just don’t have enough _left_ in me for both of us anymore, and I can’t do this alone, and I have been holding _on_ for you—”

Roy’s eye’s so hot Ed’s mouth goes dry, and in the meantime Roy pulls his gloves off, all jerky motions, like a bad marionette—and then his fingertips are skimming Ed’s cheek, grazing his ear, stroking down along his hairline—and then Roy’s arms wrap around him, _fasten_ around him, cling like there’s just no other choice—

Ed can barely breathe, but fuck it anyway. He thinks _Finally, finally, finally_ to the sound of Roy’s heart, and when Roy’s face presses in against his neck, he pretends he doesn’t feel the wet spot spreading on the collar of his shirt.


End file.
